This entry was posted on Jan 21, 2026 by Charlotte Bell.
Slowing the tempo of our lives transforms the mundane into the transcendent. It teaches us how a lot there’s to understand in simplicity.
Years in the past I took a trip to Baja, to go to some associates who had relocated. One morning I made a decision to take a stroll on a abandoned seaside. As my tempo slowed because of the mushy sand, I started to note issues alongside the way in which that I won’t have seen if I’d been rushing alongside at my traditional tempo. I observed a superbly formed conch, glowing pebbles, multicolored sand crystals. One explicit pile of tide particles caught my eye. I ended to look extra carefully.
Right here had been minute shells simply millimeters lengthy, vibrantly coloured, iridescent, unimaginably stunning. The longer I squatted within the sand inspecting the particles, the extra beautiful the scene turned. Even the tiniest shells had been beautiful, painted and lacquered with care as if by miniature artisans. I mused that if I squatted there lengthy sufficient I’d be capable to discern the character of every grain of sand within the beautiful pile of particles. I used to be grateful I had nowhere to go, no necessary job to perform. This jogged my memory of the chic fantastic thing about slowing down.
The Follow of Slowing Down
I initially turned acquainted the observe of slowing down on my first vipassana meditation retreat a few years in the past. That is the place I first realized the formal observe of strolling meditation. As the times glided by, the observe of slowing down started to filter into every part we did—consuming, brushing enamel, washing dishes, showering, ingesting a cup of tea, working towards yoga asana.
From the skin, we in all probability appeared a bit odd, perhaps slightly sleepy and lackluster. However the internal expertise couldn’t have been extra vibrant. Slowing down and connecting with the myriad micro-movements that make up every motion made me really feel totally, consciously alive.
“We’re all sensation junkies,” stated creator and meditation trainer Sylvia Boorstein on a retreat I attended at Spirit Rock Meditation Heart. We’re a tradition that craves stimulation, a tradition of velocity and pleasure. As a individuals we’re interested in driving quick, being scared out of our minds by movies, watching aggressive sports activities and listening to loud music. This stuff are thrilling and stimulating to us. Feeding our sensation behavior helps us really feel extra very important.
How Speediness Can Obscure the Second
The yoga sutras outline yoga as “the settling of the thoughts into silence.” After we velocity alongside at our routine tempo, our actions grow to be mechanical. Our minds are anyplace however within the current. However it’s within the current second the place our minds can settle into silence. After we decelerate, we will extra simply glimpse the silent thoughts, the infinite sky of consciousness.
In the identical manner the tangled mass of particles on the seaside can remodel right into a improbable panorama, the sensations of dwelling in our body-mind may be fairly compelling. However we’ve to decelerate to expertise them. From the vantage level of readability, what we see, really feel, hear, contact, scent and style could be a celebration.
By means of quiet yoga and meditation observe I’ve discovered the delicate energies shifting by means of the physique to be fascinating. After we are prepared to decelerate sufficient to look deeply, new worlds confide in us which are profoundly satisfying and enlivening.
Nonetheless, working towards slowing down on a meditation retreat, the place it’s a very important a part of the observe, is sort of completely different from making an attempt to calm the velocity of our day by day lives. In Twenty first-century Western tradition, having a full schedule is taken into account to be an indication of advantage. Taking time to chill out is taken into account to be an indication of weak point or sloth.
It’s, actually, enjoyable to have interaction in actions that stimulate. However dwelling in a state of fixed exercise, with no time to decelerate or cease, will not be a state of stability. It’s from the bottom of stability—the ever-changing centerpoint between motion and relaxation—that we stay most gracefully on the earth.
Sluggish Down, De-Stress
It’s debatable that stress is the plague of our time and tradition. Many people keep the lightning tempo of our lives by way of adrenaline. Our adrenal glands and nervous system work additional time to maintain us on observe. The adrenals are supposed to assist us by means of occasional demanding conditions, not the regular onslaught of a packed schedule. With out occasional relaxation, they put on down. Once they put on down we grow to be drained and really feel careworn.
Sluggish motion could alter our physiological stability in a manner that’s replenishing to our nervous system. Roger Cole, Ph.D., is a yoga trainer and analysis scientist who specializes within the physiology of rest, sleep and organic rhythms. He research the good thing about gradual actions, corresponding to yoga and tai chi, on the human nervous system.
“They supply regular, mild, nice enter to the nervous system from kinesthetic sensors within the physique (muscle spindle stretch receptors, golgi tendon organs, joint place sensors),” he says. “Simply as once we get a therapeutic massage, this might assist induce reflex rest of the muscle tissue and make us really feel mentally protected, lowering the ‘fight-or-flight’ response the mind (and thereby lowering the degrees of stress hormones circulating within the bloodstream).”
How Slowing Down May Truly Make You Extra Productive
Maybe the physiological advantages of slowing down would possibly even enhance our capability to perform what we have to do. After I take time every day to drop my schedule and do one thing utterly unrelated to work or to do nothing in any respect, I come again to my tasks with extra readability and equanimity. Some days could permit an hour to decelerate; others could not.
On the extra tightly scheduled days I’d do one thing easy. This might embrace:
- taking a leisurely stroll across the block
- working towards a number of yoga asanas
- mindfully washing the dishes
- taking part in with my cats
- savoring my dinner
- mindfully ingesting a cup of tea
It doesn’t matter what I do to. What issues is that I permit myself to go to the second totally, to expertise its richness and wonder. How a lot work I accomplish is much less necessary than the spirit and care I convey to what I do. Slowing the tempo of our lives transforms the mundane into the transcendent. It teaches us how a lot there’s to understand in simplicity.
About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and commenced instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the creator of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Follow and Yoga for Meditators, each printed by Rodmell Press. Her third e-book is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Defending the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a month-to-month column for CATALYST Journal and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and folks sextet Pink Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards.
